License

OS

Shouldn't this just match what the underlying afflib & sleuthkit cover? RB

Yes, but you need to test and validate on each. Question: Do we want to support windows? Simsong 21:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Joachim I think we would do wise to design with windows support from the start this will improve the platform independence from the start

Agreed; I would even settle at first for being able to run against Cygwin. Note that I don't even own or use a copy of Windows, but the vast majority of forensic investigators do. RB 14:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Requirements

AFF and EWF file images supported from scratch. (Joachim I would like to have raw/split raw and device access as well)

If we base our image i/o on afflib, we get all three with one interface. RB Instead of letting the tools use afflib, better to write an afflib module for carvfs, and update the libewf module. The tool could than be oblivious of the file format. Rob J Meijer

By default, files are not carved. (clarify: only identified? RB; I guess that it operates like Selective file dumper.FUF 07:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)). Alternatively, the tool could use libcarvpath and output carvpaths or create a directory with symlinks to carvpaths that point into a carvfs mountpoint Rob J Meijer.

Joachim The validator should deal with the file structure the carving algorithm should not know anything about the file structure (as in revit07 design)

Either extend Scalpel/Foremost syntaxes for extended features or use a tertiary syntax (Joachim I would prefer a derivative of the revit07 configuration syntax which already has encountered some problems of dealing with defining file structure in a configuration file)

Ideas

Use as much TSK if possible. Don't carry your own FS implementation the way photorec does.

Joachim using TSK as much as possible would not allow to add your own file system support (i.e. mobile phones, memory structures, cap files) I would propose wrapping TSK and using it as much as possible but allow to integrate own FS implementations.

Extracting/carving data from Thumbs.db? I've used foremost for it with some success. Vinetto has some critical bugs :( .FUF 19:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Joachim this poses an interesting addition to the carver do we want to support (let's call it) 'recursive in file carving' (for now) this is different from embedded files because there is a file system structure in the file and not just another file structure

Carving data structures. For example, extract all TCP headers from image by defining TCP header structure and some fields (e.g. source port > 1024, dest port = 80). This will extract all data matching the pattern and write a file with other fields. Another example is carving INFO2 structures and URL activity records from index.dat .FUF 20:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

This has the opportunity to be extended to the concept of "point at blob FOO and interpret it as BAR"

Configuration language/specification

.FUF added:
The main idea is to allow users to define structures, for example (in pascal-like form):

Opinion: Simple pattern identification like that may not suffice, I think Simson's original intent was not only to identify but to allow for validation routines (plugins, as the original wording was). As such, the format syntax would need to implement a large chunk of some programming language in order to be sufficiently flexible. RB

Joachim
In my option your example is too limited. Making the revit configuration I learned you'll need a near programming language to specify some file formats.
A simple descriptive language is too limiting. I would also go for 2 bytes with endianess instead of using terminology like WORD and small integer, it's much more clear. The configuration also needs to deal with aspects like cardinality, required and optional structures.

Please take a look at the revit07 configuration. It's not there yet but goes a far way. Some things currently missing:

File System Awareness

Background: Why be File System Aware?

Some file systems may store things off sector boundaries. (ReiserFS with tail packing)

Increasingly file systems have compression (NTFS compression)

Carve just the sectors that are not in allocated files.

Tasks that would be required

Discussion

As noted above, TSK should be utilized as much as possible, particularly the filesystem-aware portion. If we want to identify filesystems outside of its supported set, it would be more worth our time to work on implementing them there than in the carver itself. RB

I guess this tool operates like Selective file dumper and can recover files in both ways (or not?). Recovering files by using carving can recover files in situations where sleuthkit does nothing (e.g. file on NTFS was deleted using ntfs-3g, or filesystem was destroyed or just unknown). And we should build the list of filesystems supported by carver, not by TSK. .FUF 07:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This tool is still in the early planning stages (requirements discovery), hence few operational details (like precise modes of operation) have been fleshed out - those will and should come later. The justification for strictly using TSK for the filesystem-sensitive approach is simple: TSK has good filesystem APIs, and it would be foolish to create yet another standalone, incompatible implementation of filesystem(foo) when time would be better spent improving those in TSK, aiding other methods of analysis as well. This is the same reason individuals that have implemented several other carvers are participating: de-duplication of effort. RB

Joachim I would like to have the carver (recovery tool) also do recovery using file allocation data or remainders of file allocation data.

Joachim
I would go as far to ask you all to look beyond the carver as a tool and look from the perspective of the carver as part of the forensic investigation process. In my eyes certain information needed/acquired by the carver could be also very useful investigative information i.e. what part of a hard disk contains empty sectors.